Olan Ventura
Thursday, August 14th, 2008 ~ 4:40 pm
X PAUSED | Aug. 21 - Sep. 1, 2008 | SM Megamall
Olan Ventura follows up his last one-man exhibit, X-Posed, with X-Paused, which continues to unravel the human condition from the point of view of nightclub employees. The exhibit, featuring seven new works in oil acrylic, is on view at West Gallery in SM Megamall beginning August 21 through September 1.
Ventura notes how it was interesting to talk to these nightclub employees. While he knows that these women may sometimes lie to please their clients, he has spoken to them long enough to get an idea of their plight, and how they got into this world where their flesh is for sale. Ventura also discovered how far they would go to appease their clients, sometimes even saying what they want to hear. In his works, Ventura also uses “masks” to hide their identities, something that is often practiced at these clubs. He has spoken to them for hours, just trying to know how their lives are as they move in their circle, often a vicious one. He knows that they had their share of heartaches and frustrations, as shown in the work titled “Trapped.”
“It is like going to school and studying them as subjects,” recalls Ventura, as he forms the compositions in his head. He has asked some of them to be his models for his latest figurative works. Some declined, but he got others to pose for him. He took many photographs, each photograph giving him hints as to how he’d best portray them in his works. “They move in the same world, and somehow you get the sense that they understand each other very well,” notes Ventura, very carefully not trying to pass judgment. He knows that some of them are just waiting for people to rescue them from that way of life, while some just think they couldn’t do anything else.
X-Paused is in a way a completion of this journey of trying to understand how people around you go about their lives. Ventura chooses to sit down and pause, thinking about what motivates these people to do what they are doing. He adds that he talks to them casually, never making them feel like they were being interviewed, just listening to their stories as intently. That’s how he came up with works that deal with penance or thoughts of putting a gun into one’s head. The situations in which these people find themselves can get very complicated, Ventura realizes. There are more stories behind the masks they wear.
Ventura took up fine arts at the University of the East.